“And what does it stand for?” I asked. “See, that’s the thing about Light mages like you and Caldera and Talisid. You love to talk about these high-minded ideals that the Council supposedly stands for, and you think that makes you so much better than Dark mages. But you never seem to feel any particular need to act better than Dark mages. You love to talk about how evil your enemies are, but when you’re the ones doing the destroying or lying or killing, you never seem to have a problem with it.”
Levistus looked at me in contempt. “Like most Dark mages, you have the intellectual development of a child.”
“Yeah, well, children can still see the obvious,” I said. “You want to lecture me about only caring about myself? How many lives have you destroyed to get to where you are now, Levistus? Oh, I’m sure you don’t kill them personally. You just sit in your comfortable chair and sign orders with your fountain pen. Have you ever bothered to count? I don’t think you have. They’re just numbers on a page.”
“Your feelings are irrelevant,” Levistus said. “As are your infantile ethics.”
“You know the other thing about people like you?” I said. “You get cocky. You order people’s deaths, and because you’re not the one who has to get your hands dirty, you avoid the consequences. After a while, you stop thinking about consequences at all. You figure you’re untouchable, and for the most part, you’re right. And so when you finally go too far, it takes you a long time to notice. You know what it was in your case, that knocked down the whole house of cards? It was when you and Sal Sarque ordered for Anne to be captured and tortured two years ago. Back then, I doubt either of you gave it a second thought. But it gave Anne the push to pick up the jinn, and if you follow that chain of events all the way through, it ends up with Anne killing Sal Sarque in his island fortress a month back.”
I’d closed the distance to thirty feet. A few more steps and I’d be in range to rush him. “You really do not see it, do you?” Levistus said. “Sal Sarque’s death at your hands demonstrates precisely why you and Mage Walker needed to be removed.”
“Anne killed Sarque because of what you did.”
“She killed Sarque because she valued her self-preservation over the good of the country,” Levistus said. “As do you. Consider, Verus. Let us say that you succeed, that you and Mage Walker manage to overthrow the Council, kill enough of them to cause their resistance to collapse. Will it be worth it? When historians look back, what do you think their judgement will be? Are your lives worth more than this country?”
I was silent.
“You never even considered it,” Levistus said. “And that is why you are unfit to wield power.”
“Did you expect us to lie down and die?”
“Of course not. If you valued the good of the country over yourself, you would have. But you do not, and you did not, and instead you chose the vicious and destructive path you follow now.”
I stared into Levistus’s colourless eyes for a moment. “You know, people like you are always talking about sacrifices and the greater good,” I said. “But there’s a funny thing I’ve noticed. No matter how many people get sacrificed, you’re never one of them.”
Levistus looked back at me indifferently. “And?”
“I think maybe it’s your turn.”
I started my lunge on the last word, but Levistus was ready. Ice flashed across the room, running from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling.
I came to a stop. The wall of ice split the room in half, with me on one side and Levistus on the other. It was transparent, and nearly a foot thick. I know what ice mages are capable of, and even the strongest of them can’t throw up walls that big that fast. Levistus must have had some item or trick.
“I’d heard rumours that you were an elementalist as well as a mind mage,” I said. “Should have guessed ice would be your style.”
“The key words,” Levistus said, “are as well.”
Mental force struck me like a hammer. It wasn’t anything like the domination attempts I’d faced from Crystal and Abithriax: this was a brute-force attack designed to stun the target, crush their mind and leave them unconscious. But just as Levistus had anticipated my move, I’d anticipated his. I’d been channelling my power through the mind shield I carried, and Levistus’s attack ran into my mental defences.
Levistus struck again and again. The ice was no barrier to him, and he hammered my defences with blows of psychic force. It felt like a boxer pounding against my guard, fists slamming into my brain. But I’d had years of practice at defending myself against psychic combat, and the focus was the best I’d been able to find. Waves of hostile energy crashed against my mind, breaking against the fortress of my will.
I forced myself to ignore the mental blows and focused on the ice wall. It was thick and strong, but it was real ice, with the weaknesses that came with it. I focused on vulnerable points, using the fateweaver to amplify them, then I lifted my MP7, clicked it to single-shot, and began firing, slowly and deliberately, one bullet per second. The flat report of the gun echoed in the chamber, my divination guiding each bullet as it slammed into the ice.
“If you expect to shoot through—” Levistus began.
My fifth bullet hit, and there was a rumbling crunch. Cracks spiderwebbed through the wall and Levistus stopped talking.
I fired a sixth bullet, and a seventh.
Levistus made a gesture and the air next to him shimmered. A humanoid figure took form, visible only to my magesight, floating just above and beside him, sculpted out of lines of vapour. It was an air elemental like Starbreeze, but where Starbreeze’s face was expressive and ever-changing, this one’s face was blank.
“It took me some time to replace Thirteen,” Levistus said. “The changes proved more complex than predicted. Still, I suppose this is as good a time as any for a field test. I think you’ll find it quite effective at its purpose.”
I kept firing. Eight shots, nine. There was another rumble and a section of wall five feet up cracked and fell.
Levistus twitched his hand.
The elemental soared up, quick as lightning, darting through the hole I’d made, then curving down. Those eerie blank eyes were locked on my face as it dove towards me. Air elementals don’t need to strike or buffet their targets; they can turn a living being to air and scatter them across a thousand miles. This one wasn’t intending to do that—some limitation of whatever Levistus had done to enslave it, maybe. It was going to try to flow straight down my throat and asphyxiate me. Just as fatal.
I’d pulled the wand from my belt the instant the elemental began moving. As it went into its dive, I fired.
Red light flashed out, carrying the scent of ozone. The elemental tried to dodge aside, but somehow, despite its speed, the beam caught it in the head. In my magesight I saw the beam tear through the core of animating magic within the creature and burn through the other end. The elemental wisped into vapour, destroyed in an instant.